How To Address Ophthalmology EHR Usability Issues

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• How to solve your ophthalmology EHR usability
  issues Train your staff, customize your
  settings, and optimize your workflows
• Electronic health records (EHRs) are powerful
  tools that give incredible power, usability, and
  flexibility to health care providers, and by some
  estimates, nearly 96 percent of hospitals in the
  United States use an EHR system.
• Electronic health records are a core component of
  a health care providers IT system, and they
  power a wide range of tools, including schedule
  management, appointment scheduling, billing,
  pre-authorization, and provider access to a
  patients medical charts. Specifically, they
  decrease charting time and the amount of effort
  needed to document a patients visit while also
  lessening the complexity that is required to meet
  regulatory reporting standards for health care
  providers and also improving an offices
  usability, operations, and patient handling
  ability.
• But despite their incredible usability and
  flexibility, many health care providers struggle
  to use their optometry software and electronic
  health record systems, and this can impact
  office operations and affect the quality of
  patient care that a provider can deliver. Common
  EHR problems include
• Difficulty capturing documentation
• Increased day to day burdens
• Lack of interoperability with different programs
• Problematic access to and reporting for EHR
  performance and other variables
• This blog will look at common EHR usability
  issues and how to overcome them.
• The problem with EHR usability issues
• Even as electronic health record systems continue
  to develop and become more sophisticated,
  problems persist, and these problems have a
  variety of impacts. Chief among them is that
  issues with EHRs could potentially lead to harm
  to patients. These can include problems related
  to system design and implementation, with issues
  including
• Drug dosing errors Drug dosing errors can stem
  from the removal or inappropriate placement of a
  decimal point during the entry, which can lead
  to overdosing or inadequate doses.

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• A cluttered interface A confusing dashboard
  interface can result in the health care provider
  choosing the wrong medication for a patient.
• Alert fatigue Too many alerts can cause
  providers to begin to ignore them, which can
  lead to a variety of errors. Too many alerts can
  also cause providers to lose concentration or
  have workflows that are disrupted.
• Lack of consistency in data entry A complex or
  confusing
• dashboard or EHR interface can result in click
  fatigue, and that increases the risk of error
  and can cause burnout or frustration among
  health care providers.
• Obviously, these optometry practice software
  problems have a variety of root causes. The root
  cause of optometry EHR usability issues include
  inadequate training, a lack of attention to
  settings, and simple subjective criteria such as
  dashboard design, font size, and display color.
  Luckily, a good EHR system will have a design
  that overcomes many of these issues, and a full
  review of an EHR prior to signing a use contract
  will ensure that a health care provider winds up
  with a system they can use.
• Recommendations to overcome electronic health
  record usability issues
• Choose an electronic health record system that
  has great flexibility and opportunities for
  customization. Customization is key to EHR use
  since each user will have different staff,
  different processes, and different preferences.
  There is no true off-the-shelf EHR system, and a
  good system that works well for a particular
  health care provider will offer full
  customization ability so you can have a system
  that works smoothly for all your providers.
• Assess your workflow needs in detail before
  choosing an EHR system or HIPAA compliance The
  best way to find an electronic health record
  system that works for you is to perform a
  detailed workflow analysis of all your operations
  and procedures. Once the process is fully
  spelled out, work with the eyecare EHR provider
  or your eyecare EHR vendor to align your
  workflow with the EHR workflow and understand how
  the electronic health record system will enable
  decision support, documentation, and data
  presentation.
• Conduct thorough training of all your staff on
  the EHR and all its features, quirks, and tools.
  As with any powerful new piece of technology,
  getting to know how to use an electronic health
  record may be most of the battle. One or more
  training

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• sessions for either your health care
  professionals, front office staff, back-office
  staff, and physicians may be needed to get to
  fully know your system and get the most out of
  it. This training should include both
  classroom-style instruction and hands on
  training so your staff can be more familiar with
  the system.
• Role-based training for specific workflows may
  help key staff understand how their interfaces
  work, and make sure to appoint superusers or
  system custodians who can be resources for peers
  who need help or new employees who are
  onboarding.
• Align your workflows to the EHR. Often, simple
  tweaks to your workflow can go a long way to
  making your EHR more usable. This can include
  proper settings for alerts, how to present and
  group lab results, how to record numeric data,
  where to source medication content, and
  optimizing third-party apps that your clinicians
  already use.
• Find the EHR that works for you
• Over the past decade or so, electronic health
  records have emerged as indispensable components
  of modern health care offices, but despite their
  revolutionary power, they have not solved all
  problems for every office, and in some cases,
  they can exacerbate the problems they were meant
  to solve. While any office will have problems to
  confront and solve, electronic health records
  are key for a number of reasons they can help
  to ensure the health and usability of patient
  records and be used to enhance patient safety
  and improve patient outcomes. Luckily, a bit of
  work up front can help solve those problems, and
  that can include training, custom settings,
  standardize workflows, and finding an EHR that
  has an ample amount of flexibility.
• Eye Care Leaders has multiple solutions for
  practices looking for a powerful, intuitive,
  simple to use electronic health record system.
  Based on the companys myCare platform, tools
  like iMedicWare allow providers to take control
  of their practice with a single-platform EHR, PM,
  ASC, and optical solution that provide powerful
  solutions and analytics reporting.
• To learn more, contact Eye Care Leaders today and
  schedule a free consultation.